Ben’s audiophile stereo set-up on a budget
Ben’s audiophile stereo set-up on a budget. Not everybody has 10K plus to spend on a brand new AV set-up.
Fair to say, it’s a frustration for Ben too, Rapallo’s awesome marketing intern on a student budget. It doesn’t stop him from going on an audiophile adventure though. We love to see his budding passion and dedication for AV. It’s the beginning of a lifelong journey of love for AV, we can tell and it would be a shame not to share it with you. Here’s Ben’s story and the set-up he has built with patient saving and hours of research.
‘A nice 5.1 home theatre system is not on the cards for me yet. But it’s not that difficult to build a quality audio setup for your computer on a budget. If you spend a lot of your time at your desk, as I do, you may as well invest in a set up to let you enjoy great sounding music.’
Three Key Components to my desktop hi fi setup.
DAC, Speakers, and Files.
Digital to Analog:
The first thing I wanted to do, is to bypass the poor sound card in my computer. The reason being is that the computer’s sound card isn’t able to decode Hi-Res files to their full potential. It really must be Hi-Res for me. Here are some of the considerations I made and the options I looked into:
The solution to the poor performing sound card in a computer is an external DAC. This comes in the form of USB drive, or a USB cable plugged from your computer to a component/box. Some of them are wall powered and some are USB powered from your computer. There is a huge range to choose from with ones supporting various DAC chips and some also with built-in headphone amplifiers.
I like the Topping range that has speaker connectors, headphone amplifiers, and multiple inputs. There are many options and combinations among their range. The Model that has is all is the TP32EX, they call it their all in one unit. It has a USB 24bit/96kHz DAC, and RCA (Aux) input, Headphone amplifier, and speaker posts. With 50 watts per channel it can power most small bookshelf speakers that can fit on a desk.
The other consideration to make is whether you need a desktop DAC (like the above Topping) and/or a portable DAC that enables you to hook one up to your mobile device. If portable is the way to go for you, the FiiO range would be a good considerable option.
I love to have both a desktop and portable DAC for use at my desk as well as away from home.
DAC chips design and functionality
Some DACs have dual chip sets to help with power supply related noise. ESS Tech make some of the most popular reference chips, and also make quality mobile chips like the ESS Sabre ES9010 and 9018 found in the Dragonfly Black and Red respectively. One of the things that attracted me was the fact that ESS are the company that make the DACs in the Oppo reference Blu-ray players.
You will find various Cirrus Logic chips in the Topping range, and AKM are used in Audioengine. Each DAC manufacturer has different sound signatures, and it all comes down to personal preference, I believe.
DACs will have a maximum sampling rate and bit resolution. For example 24bit/96kHz, or 16bit/48kHz. DSD functionality allows for sample rates of 2.8224 MHZ (that’s 64 times the CD audio rate of 44.1 kHz) DSD even goes up to 11.2MHz!
A DAC’s sampling rate and bit resolution is something I seriously look at when choosing your DAC. This is important if you have a collection of Hi-Res files. You want to make sure your DAC can decode them first!
Great desktop DACs would be the Topping D30 as well as the earlier mentioned TP32EX, Audioengine D1, great portable ones would be the Dragonfly Black and Red or the Fiio E17K. I ended up choosing both the desktop Topping TP32EX as well as the portable Dragonfly Black for my set-up.
I use the Dragonfly mostly with my laptop while studying at the library. It gives me the ability to listen to hi res while away from home.
The Speakers and the Amp
For a desktop, I wanted to look for Bookshelf speakers that have a small footprint so they can sit nicely next to my screen.
Being so close to the speakers, I didn’t need a pair that can go super-loud. The SVS Prime Satellites are an amazing pair of small speakers. Beautifully designed and carry the same tweeter in the Prime range. The frequency response of smaller speakers means they cannot house large woofers, and cannot reach the lower frequencies.
The solution is to add a subwoofer to fill the lower frequency gap. With this in mind, I wanted to look for speakers that can reach the highest frequency of over 20,000 Hz. This way, I can think about getting a subwoofer later down the road.
Great affordable bookshelf speakers I looked into were the SVS Satellites, Jamo C601s, Elac Debut range and Audioengine.
My next consideration was whether to get passive or active speakers.
Active speakers have built in amplifiers, usually one speaker has the amp and the other speaker would be a single passive that would connect with the other speaker through speaker cable. Active speakers are basically plug and play. A great example would be the Audioengine A2+, or the higher end Yamaha NX-N500. The more common type of speaker would be the passive kind. They have no amp built-in and need to be powered through a separate amplifier. I decided on the Jamo’s, a pair of passive speakers.
I chose the Jamo’s because of the quality you get for the price. I like the unique design of my Jamo’s; the tweeter is positioned bellow the bass/mid woofers. There bass extension is considerably exceptional for their size. And the imaging is very accurate. I can accurately pin-point different instruments and the voice between the 2 speakers.
The black speaker stands on my desk are hand-made. Since the Jamo’s Tweeters are lower, I needed to elevate the speakers considerably high to make the tweeters at the height level of my ears. So, it was beneficial to custom make the stands. I painted them in black stain and then coated in clear varnish. It all took some time but it was a great experience.
The Amp
One thing to make sure is that the amplifier can successfully output the amount of power the speakers need and the speakers can handle the amount of power an amp can output. A general rule of thumb is to allow for a 30% to 50% increase in amplifier power over the rated speaker’s average (RMS Power). For example, if your speakers are rated at 100W, the amplifier paired with it should be delivering a 130W to 150W power rating. I love to refer to a previous Rapallo blog that goes deep into amp and speaker matching.
I looked into both the Topping TP23 and the TP32EX and the Pioneer A-10 for a great stereo amp for my set-up. I also considered the small but fancy Yamaha WXA-50. My decision was the Topping TP32EX, which of course, doubles as a desktop DAC.
What I like so much about the Topping is that it is an exceptional all-rounder. It combines everything I need in a desktop amp: It has built-in DAC (24bit/96kHz), Speaker connectors, and headphone amp all in one! It comes with a small remote to control volume select sources and select output (eg. Headphone amp, Speaker posts, or both). The only thing I would have liked from it is an actual volume twist knob, instead of the up and down push buttons
The “Audio Files”
The other big part of a desktop audio set up is the software and actual digital files that play Hi Res audio. Budget unfortunately limits my options at the moment.
It is my believe that even streaming Spotify Premium sounds good on a quality Hi-Fi setup streaming 320Kbps. It is something I definitely consider for the future, as the DAC will enhance all the audio that plays from the computer.
In the ideal world, I would download Hi-Res files. Unfortunately, the funds aren’t there at the moment and my collection is fairly limited, but the following websites for downloading Hi-Res samples do have my attention:
There are digital albums in Lossless formats from HDTracks, Linn Records https://www.linnrecords.com/. There are also FLACs and ALACs up 24bit/192kHz, and DSD, with 2L selling 5.1 channel files.
Another one worth looking at is Bandcamp, but it takes some digging to find the high quality tracks available.
I like 2L, an excellent website which offers many Hi-Res samples in almost every Sample Rate and Bit Depth imaginable, a great source for those experimenting in the world of Hi-Res : https://www.2l.no/hires/index.html
My turn will come.
One thing I do a lot is ripping CD’s to disk, as this gives much better sound quality and clarity (16bit/44.1kHz) than streaming from the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. I have a fair amount of CD’s, also from my parent’s collection, so that is a very affordable option for me.
As a Mac user, I rip CDs to ALAC in 16bit 44.1kHz to iTunes. You just need to make sure you select the correct settings before importing. Note that iTunes will rip your CDs to ALAC Apple’s audio codec. If you want FLAC you just need to find a simple audio converter application such as Media Human. https://www.mediahuman.com/.
For Windows users you can find a plethora of applications to rip CDs such as Exact Audio Copy.
Of course, there is also Tidal. Tidal claims to stream 16 bit audio. The higher priced HiFi subscription however was a deal breaker for me.
And then some:
On my desk also sits the FiiO X3 2nd Gen-Digital Audio player, which is an affordable Swiss knife DAP. When it comes to affordable quality, you can’t beat FiiO with their excellent updates and customer support. The new X5 3rd gen DAP is awesome, but unfortunately out of my budget at the moment.
In the picture you also see the the Bloc and Roc Galvanize S2 Headphones, which were a gift.
I find these headphones to be very revealing. Strong and clear highs. If you like your treble and mids. Really pleasant design and well made, they are hand crafted using Aerospace-grade aluminium. I love how light-weight these headphones are, and just enough clamp to isolate outside noise. The impedance is 32 ohms so they can be powered easily by smart devices etc.
Note: For our student customers with a budding love for AV, just like Ben, we now have a section in our Audio packages that is set-up especially with you in mind.